


We Choose the Fire Pathway

by ruanyu



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, F/F, Overworked Pepper Potts, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Pepper Potts Needs a Hug, Protective Natasha Romanov, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:21:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24704500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruanyu/pseuds/ruanyu
Summary: It was clear to them what drew them to each other after all their attempts at “normal” ended and they both decided, mutually, to no longer care.“I can’t anymore,” Pepper said, one evening, her hair just beginning to slip out of the tight coil she had ruthlessly pinned it back into, still in her pristine white blouse and black skirt and black uncomfortable looking stilettos.Pepper’s put-togetherness had always made Natasha itch to undo her somehow, to imagine her ruffled and flushed and flustered, giving the reins over to someone else who would take over and let her relax. Someone like Natasha, just for example. Now though, with Pepper’s expression so worn, her mask so gossamer thin, Natasha could only offer her friend what support she had. “You don’t have to,” she soothed, plotting the downfall of whoever it was who had pushed Pepper to such exhaustion, such bone-deep weariness with life and the world in general.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	We Choose the Fire Pathway

**Author's Note:**

> Because I am emotionally attached to these two, and there's just not enough of this pairing.

It is not clear why we choose the fire pathway  
Where we end is not the way that we had planned  
All the spirits gather 'round like its our last day  
To get across, you know, we'll have to raise the sand

\-- LP, Muddy Waters

It was clear to them what drew them to each other after all their attempts at “normal” ended and they both decided, mutually, to no longer care. 

“I can’t anymore,” Pepper said, one evening, her hair just beginning to slip out of the tight coil she had ruthlessly pinned it back into, still in her pristine white blouse and black skirt and uncomfortable looking stilettos. 

Pepper’s put-togetherness had always made Natasha itch to undo her somehow, to imagine her ruffled and flushed and flustered, giving the reins over to someone else who would take over and let her relax. Someone like Natasha, just for example. Now though, with Pepper’s expression so worn, her mask so gossamer thin, Natasha could only offer her friend what support she had. “You don’t have to,” she soothed, plotting the downfall of whoever it was who had pushed Pepper to such exhaustion, such bone-deep weariness with life and the world in general. 

Pepper smiled, wry. “I don’t, do I?” But then she blinked, a one-two rapid beat trying to clear her vision, and the tears dropped of their own accord. “Ugh, I don’t even know why I’m crying,” she said, with a sniff, mocking her own emotions, smearing her tears away and leaving smears of mascara under her eyes, adding to the shadows she covered so carefully everyday, dabbing the concealer in with tentative fingers to avoid wrinkling fine skin.

“There are always too many reasons for women our age to cry,” said Natasha, maybe too darkly.

They drank more than they should, to mourn all the reasons women had to despair of the world. Their hands brushed.

“But you’re so strong,” Pepper murmured, and her hand crept up, tentative, asking for permission, to feel the reassurance of strength in tension of muscle under skin.

“So are you,” Natasha said, and she too had dropped her voice, low and velvety, because they were close enough for whispers, for secrets. “They don’t know how strong you are. I do. I see you.” 

For long seconds they breathed there, close enough to share the air, to feel each other's exhalation, asking if they would, if they could, if it was time. 

When their lips met, it was first tentative, then fierce, hungry and fulfilling each other’s hunger for more than the world had offered them. Natasha tasted the salt tears that trickled down a wan freckled face and she could not remember when she herself had last cried like this, this involuntary and relentless outpouring of emotion behind locked doors because the world cannot see a woman's weakness.

And when they broke the kiss, when they pulled apart, flushed and disbelieving, when they had taken several composing breaths, Pepper said something to that effect, something about being strong, about wanting to be strong like her. 

“You don’t cry,” Pepper said. “Even with everything you’ve been through. You’re so strong.” 

Natasha scoffed. How was it strength not to be able to confront your own emotions? 

“You don’t wish you were me,” she said. "Don't say you do." 

“Why not?”

Because she went through life choking back her rage and sorrow at all she had lost, the wasted years when she could have been a child.

“I was taught too well. I only cry when I’m playing the vulnerable woman, just before I choke my target with my thighs,” said Natasha, jerking her lips into a smile, softening the reality of her young life with humor.

The humor worked. Pepper let out a sharp breath, delighted. Delight made her eyes dance, and crinkle at the corners. “I shouldn’t find that sexy, should I?”

Natasha waggled her brows, and Pepper laughed, and Natasha kissed her again then, hand tipping up her delicate chin, just for that laugh, that was like the summer sun. 

They woke curled around each other with the tang of salt and sex on their hands and in their mouths and tender bruises in all the places they had grappled to hold the other down to take their fill from each other. Natasha rose on an elbow and considered Pepper. She touched a darkening bruise on Pepper’s wrist. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. 

Pepper smiled. “Don’t be,” she said. 

“That’s how it’ll be then?” Natasha said. 

Pepper nodded. They were kindred, mirror images. 

“You know Tony’s gonna make jokes about redheads?” Pepper asked. 

“Yeah. Let’s see how long it takes those thickheads to figure it out,” said Natasha.

What they had found with each other would be worth all of Tony’s jokes.

“Sometimes I need it,” Pepper whispered, looking at Natasha’s hands, thinking how capable they, how sure, and how the agile slender fingers with their blunt nails that knew all the ways a woman could be pleased. Natasha listened, made a soft sound that meant “I know.”

“Sometimes I feel bad about needing,” Pepper continued. 

Natasha nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I understand that.” Especially in the morning, Natasha’s voice had this low, throaty quality that always made Pepper want to meld into her body, burrow right into her arms. Natasha appeared to be all lean strength and prickly stand-offishness, but, as it turned out, she gave gathering you in type hugs, tucking Pepper right in the nook of shoulder and neck and holding her with this indomitable, enclosing strength. 

“Tony didn’t like that part of me,” Pepper said. She hesitated. “He was into some things, but not…not what I needed, you know?”

Pepper knew her prudishness with words outside the immediate context of sexual acts never failed to amuse Natasha. She was surprisingly good at talking dirty, but take her out of bed and her cheeks flushed when she confessed her more kinky desires. And that never failed to make Natasha smirk. 

She did not seem surprised about Pepper’s revelation about Tony. “Too much vulnerability?” 

Pepper inclined her head. “He’s experimented, but...He can't be serious about that kind of thing, you know?”

“Ah,” said Natasha, wryly. She did wry so well. 

Pepper hugged her knees. “And that was part of why we didn’t work.” She hesitated. “It makes me feel awful…sometimes I am so exasperated with myself for being so stereotypical. Sometimes I blame my nature on how I was brought up.” 

"And what's wrong with how you are?"

"You know, feminine and wanting someone else to take control in the bedroom? People expect that."

"From a boss lady like you?" 

"Being a boss lady in the work environment makes it worse. I feel like I can't own my other self. Like one or the other is a mask somehow."

"But both are genuine."

"Yes," said Pepper.

Natasha shook her head. “Then fuck ‘em. We do what we take pleasure in, right?” she said. “No guilt. We don’t have time for that.” 

“Yes,” Pepper said, and then she spoke the words herself, like she was testing them out. “Fuck them.”

Natasha grinned. "That's my girl." 

And Pepper flushed because possessiveness did things to her and because even when in jest she knew how seriously it was meant. 

They didn’t say anything about what was between them, but the people they worked with were too sharp eyed not too notice, and they did not care enough to pretend indifference. Their eyes caught and held, they smiled at each other, small and secret, and one time when Natasha came home from a long mission with her face and eyes empty and still, Pepper was there for her, waiting, grounding her with her touch, gentling her untouchable jagged edges, promising more than soothing, later, promising what they both needed to unwind.

“You’re…” Clint said, startled, and then immediately bit his tongue. But it had already been said, and the others all saw what Clint had seen in how close they were, how Pepper’s concern was communicated in touch. Tony stepped in, doing what he did best, making a quick leering quip about watching that eased the discomfort in the room. Natasha snorted, but her eyes carried a warning. “Dream on, Stark.” 

And that was all that was said at that point. Tony came to Natasha a few days later, and gave her his blessing and the shovel talk at the same time. 

“I hurt her, didn’t think of her needs, only mine,” he said, uncomfortable in his rare sincerity. “Don’t you dare do the same.” 

“I won’t,” Natasha said, voice balanced. 

He hesitated. “Are you…uhm…you know she likes….control? Do you…?”

Natasha smiled, sharp as her knives. “As if I’d tell you.” 

“Fair enough,” he grinned. “But the offer stands if you’re into exhibitionism.” 

"We're not fodder for your fantasies, Stark," said Natasha, hard-voiced, all humor melted from her face. 

Tony raised his brows, because they both knew his modus operandi was to hide feeling under jokes. "Uh...yeah I know. Who pissed in your cornflakes?"

Natasha didn't change her expression. She was the Black Widow now. "Hire more people to help her carry the load. I better never see her exhausted again. Understand?"

"Of course," said Tony, fumbling, uncharacteristically. "I mean she...she always wanted the responsibility. I didn't know that she..." 

Natasha gave a sharp nod. "Well now you know."

"She came to you?"

"No. I take care of what's mine." 

Tony eyed her, consideringly. "And are you hers?"

"While she'll have me," said Natasha, with a shrug, because she knew finitude and knew to take each day as it came, not thinking of the future, only holding on to every morning she had that was like this morning, rising sun gilding their red hair gold, twining the strands together on the pillow. 

That was more than enough. It was everything.


End file.
